Long-term hiatus

This has been in the making for a while, but I'm officially putting this blog on long-term hiatus. Good luck in your homeschooling journey!

Studying ocean layers

We've been really laid-back about the current space and ocean studies. I make up some material whenever I'm inspired, and we fit the conversations into our day. I decided to put together some stuff for Sprout's nap time on Sunday, so we did an alphabetical order activity (train cars), some work with golden beads and tens, and an ocean layer activity. (When I asked Nugget what she wanted to do during Sprout's nap -- "read books, play alone, do homeschool" -- she jumped up and down and said, "homeschool! homeschool!". Poor kid! I wish I had more energy/motivation to make up more schooling stuff.)

To make the ocean layer activity, I painted a piece of posterboard with 4 shades of blue (in theory, there should be one more for the trenches, but I skipped that for now). Then I printed off pictures of some of the animals that can be found in each layer. The backs of the pictures have a brushstroke of the same color as their layer, so that Nugget can check her work.


Top: Sunlit layer with dolphins, penguins, tuna, etc.

Second down: Twilight layer with laternfish, bristlemouth, and jellyfish

Third down: Midnight layer with anglerfish

Bottom: Abyss with tube worms, sea pig, and basket star

This was an excellent activity. She was really interested, we had some great conversations, and she was able to place everyone accurately after one demonstration. This hit her interest perfectly, because she's fascinated with/terrified of the anglerfish from Finding Nemo (she's never seen most of the movie, but we've read the book and gone on the ride at Disney).

Where am I?

I disappeared for longer than a traditional winter break, huh?

Things are kind of up in the air here. I'm in a period of reevaluation for our homeschooling in the short term.

I now have a 9 month old who has three non-crying states -- attached to Mommy, into anything he can reach, or attached to Mommy AND into everything he can reach. His naps are unpredictable and short. All this to say that sitting down for dedicated school time with Nugget just isn't happening, not even considering the preparation time that goes into it. I'm feeling a fair amount of guilt about it.

So here's what I'm doing:

1. I'm working on telling myself that it's just a season, that soon enough he'll be in a place to spend more one-on-one time with Daddy or to participate without destruction.

2. I'm working on changing my curriculum perspective -- instead of thinking about all those things I think Nugget could handle at this point (landforms, bank game, etc), I'm thinking instead about what things I feel are important for a 3 year old to know. Those are more whole-person things -- playing outside, lots of free time with craft materials, early chapter books, lots of exposure to navigating the adult world (post office, grocery store, etc), and -- of course -- trying my best to patiently answer the endless endless questions.

3. I'm temporarily switching from Montessori lessons to being Montessori-inspired. For instance, the Sensorial materials are away, but I try to incorporate the three-part lesson in daily life.

4. I'm trying out some more pre-packaged curriculum options. I have to fight my nature to tweak and change -- but I need to recognize that an imperfect solution that's easy enough to implement that we actually DO it is better than a perfect one that overwhelms me and we can never use. This week we're trying out Five in a Row. Each day for 5 days you read a classic storybook (we're doing "Owl Moon") and do suggested activities for one of the focus areas -- social studies, language, art, math, science.

Writing all this out makes me feel a bit better. I still feel like a slacker, but I'm pretty convinced that I'm not damaging Nugget for life. :)

Winter Break

I just couldn't keep up with personal stuff, holiday projects, AND homeschooling. So we're on winter break!

Wrapping up, moving on

Been quite here on the blog because it's been quiet in the homeschool area. We pretty much exhausted our Australia studies and I decided to wrap up insects. We're just starting to move into space and, after that, to ocean life.

Things have been busy around here, but Nugget is begging to study space. So I've got to get moving and give her some materials....

Australia, insects, and golden beads

I'm really loving how "school" is flowing around here these days. We don't have sit-down time; instead, the materials are out for us to pick up at any time and I have a few topics in mind that I try to emphasize throughout our day. Some days we do nothing, some days we do a lot. But it's so much easier and more enjoyable than what I was trying to do before.

We're slowly moving along the math progression. I put the golden bead material out a few weeks ago, and we worked on terminology for a while. She mixed up "hundred" and "thousand" quite a bit, but when she seemed to have them straight, I brought out the 1, 10, 100, and 1000 number cards. We've worked with those for a few days, but now she's mixing up "hundred" and "thousand" again. So we're going to slow down and I'm going to try to come up with ways to bring those terms up a lot more.

We've spent a couple days on each of a number of insects -- butterflies, ants, and ladybugs. My choices have been driven by what life cycle models I have. :) Nugget LOVES the life cycle models. Sometimes she'll choose one to take to the store with her. I have a pile of library books about different insects, and when we've hit a lull, I just pull out the next one that seems interesting. I'm thinking about maybe going with bees next.... or maybe I'll wait until we can get to the local farmer's market and taste samples from the local honey producer!

Our main focus has been on Australia. Once Nugget was able to name all of the continents on the continents puzzle, I let her choose which one to learn about first. Her choice of Australia was a surprise to no one.

I've been worried about doing continent studies because I don't have many items or materials. But we just jumped into it and I started making things to stay one day ahead of her. Over the last 2 weeks or so, we've covered a lot and accumulated quite a collection.

This is our continent/science/language shelf. The top shelf is Australia, the bottom has sandpaper letters and Progressive Phonics readers (we're not doing much language these days) and insect books and life cycle models.


The Australia shelf. The "artwork" is our versions of Aboriginal dot paintings (there's an outline of a wombat somewhere under Nugget's) and coloring book pages of Australian kids. I put out some of Nugget's stuffed animals from Australia, a couple of our MANY Australia books (the rest are with the rest of our books), and figures from the Coral Reef and Australian animal Safari Toobs.


This is a felt map of Australia that I cut out. The pictures are of Australian landmarks; they're attached with velcro, so next year she can remove them and figure out where they go.


Nugget's obsession, as always, is with the animals. So that's where we've done most of our focus. And Australia has some of the most interesting animals, ones that my husband and I have always been fascinated with!

Her main interest is the Safari Toob animals. She talks about them and carries them everywhere, which provides opportunity for all sorts of interesting discussions. Like when she's burrowing under blankets with her wombat, my husband can talk to her about how wombats dig their burrows and what they're like.

I've made some activities for with the animals. I printed out pictures of habitats and food, so that she can match the figures to the appropriate picture (answers are on the back).



I also made cards for her to sort by how the animals have their babies (egg, pouch, or live).


In the past few days we've also listened to didgeridoo music and decorated a paper towel tube like one. Today we started to touch on the Great Barrier Reef.

This has been really interesting and fun for both of us. I've learned a lot, too!

I am a bit worried about the other continents.... Australia is so easy because continent == country. Those continents that are so much more diverse -- like Africa, which she expressed interest in doing next -- are going to be much more difficult.

Ant experiment

We moved from butterflies to ants -- mostly because I have life cycle models for those two. :) We talked about the life cycle, read a book, and watched some videos the other day.

Today we did a fun experiment. I divided a paper plate into sections and Nugget raided the kitchen to find foods she thought the ants might like. Each food went into a section, and we put the plate between 3 anthills.


We went out a few times during the day to check on it. I thought about counting and charting how many ants appear, but I think that's a bit complex. Maybe next year!

Instead, we just observed. I was actually surprised! I had expected the fruits to be the big draw, but instead, it was the Honey Nut Cheerios and the pizza! The raisins drew a few visitors, none for the fruit or bread.

Tomorrow, we may gather some ants in a glass jar and watch them dig tunnels!

In geography, Nugget's got the continents down. We looked at some pictures from the various continents (thanks, Jo!) as well as a bunch of the postcards I've gotten from Postcrossing.

I let her choose which continent we'd study next and, of course, she chose Australia! We'll start in on that once the many, many books I've reserved from the library come in....